![\"\"](\"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/is099s5ht-150x112.jpg\" "\\"is099s5ht\\"")
\"Fred wrote to Congress to complain about this policy nearly four months before Silvia ____________\"<\/p>\n\"Fred wrote to Congress to complain about this policy nearly four months before Silvia ____________\"<\/p>\n
What we want to say is --- Fred wrote to Congress, and Silvia also wrote to Congress, but Fred did what he did before Silvia did what she did.\u00a0 The question is --- how do we end that sentence eloquently in a way that means \"did the same thing\"?\u00a0 In other words, we want to repeat, in abbreviated form, the predicate.\u00a0 (The\u00a0predicate<\/strong>\u00a0is the verb and the entire phrase that follows it.) \u00a0How do we repeat the predicate in abbreviated form?\u00a0 First, let's talk about the wrong answer.<\/p>\n Using the word \"this\" in a construction such as this would be wrong 100% of the time on the GMAT Sentence Correction.\u00a0 Why is that wrong?\u00a0 What is the correct thing to say?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The word \"this\" is a pronoun, a\u00a0demonstrative pronoun<\/strong>\u00a0--- others include \"that\", \"these\", and \"those.\"\u00a0 There are also\u00a0personal pronouns<\/strong>\u00a0---- \"I\", \"you\", \"he\", \"she\", \"they\" (each of these also have possessive & objective forms --- \"I\", \"my\", \"mine\", \"me\", etc.)\u00a0 There are also\u00a0indefinite pronouns<\/strong>, a large category including --- \u00a0\"someone\", \"everyone\", \"everyone\", \"no one\", \"anyone\", then those five again with \"body\" or \"thing\" substituted for \"one\", the word \"one\" by itself, \"each\", \"none\", \"all\", \"another\", etc.<\/p>\n For the purposes of this blog, those are all just\u00a0pronouns<\/strong>.\u00a0 The job of a pronoun is to substitute for a noun, to take the place of a noun. That's what pronouns do, and that's all they do.<\/p>\n When can we use a pronoun of some sort for repeating a predicate in abbreviated form?\u00a0 It would be legitimate to use a pronoun in this construction\u00a0only if<\/em>\u00a0the first verb is a form of the verb \"to do\".\u00a0 Of all the tens of thousands of verbs in the English language that could be in the first predicate, only this one verb, the verb \"to do\", will allow us to use a pronoun in the second part.<\/p>\n 1)\u00a0Fred did the complicated procedure on page 137 of the manual before Silvia did\u00a0it<\/em>.<\/p>\n 2)\u00a0Fred will do his laundry before Silvia does\u00a0hers<\/em>.<\/p>\n 3)\u00a0Fred has done triple somersaults long before Silvia ever did\u00a0one<\/em>.<\/p>\n In all three of those, as it happens, the verb in the first part of the sentence was a form of the verb \"to do\".\u00a0 When repeating the predicate, we are using the exact same verb, \"to do\", and need only a pronoun of some kind to replace the noun, the direct object of the first verb.\u00a0 All well and good, but there are thousands of other verbs in the language for which this trick will not work.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For all other verbs, we use a form of the verb \"do\" as a substitute for any other verb.\u00a0 When we are substituting the verb \"to do\" for another verb, we no longer can substitute a pronoun for the object.\u00a0 Instead, we are replacing the entire predicate, [verb] + [object].\u00a0 For this, we use the magic word \"so.\"\u00a0 The magic combination \"do so\" can substitute for any other possible predicate in the English language.\u00a0 This is by far the most concise way to accomplish this.\u00a0 Of course, one could use something wordier, such as \"do the same thing\" --- technically, that also would be grammatical correct, but such an awkward wordy monstrosity would never be acceptable on GMAT Sentence Correction.\u00a0 Examples:<\/p>\n 4)\u00a0Fred will rent a canoe before Silvia does so<\/em>.<\/p>\n 5)\u00a0Fred insulted the hostess before Silvia also did so<\/em>.<\/p>\n 6)\u00a0Fred climbed\u00a0<\/em>Mt. Kilimanjaro<\/em><\/a>\u00a0seven times before Silvia ever did so<\/em>.<\/p>\n 7)\u00a0Fred has traveled to Bangkok every year since 1973, but this is the first time that Silvia has done so<\/em>.<\/p>\n 8)\u00a0Fred wrote to Congress to complain about this policy nearly four months before Silvia did so.<\/em><\/p>\n This is grammatically correct, and exactly what the GMAT will expect on Sentence Correction, but exceedingly few people speak this way in casual conversation.\u00a0 This construction is so rare in colloquial English that it may sound unnatural to your ear.\u00a0 Retrain your ear, so that this construction sounds correct, because it is.\u00a0 It will help to elevate the level of\u00a0your reading<\/a>.<\/p>\n This post was written by Mike McGarry, GMAT expert at Magoosh<\/a>, and originally posted here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Fred wrote to Congress to complain about this policy nearly four months before Silvia ____________” What we want to say is — Fred wrote to Congress, and Silvia also wrote…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,783,243,719,735],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gmat","category-magoosh-blog","category-blog","category-sentence-correction-gmat","category-verbal-gmat-blog","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16771"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17192,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16771\/revisions\/17192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"rep_img1\"](\"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/gmat\/files\/2013\/01\/rep_img1.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nPronouns --- what they can and can't do<\/h2>\n
For all other verbs \u2026.<\/h2>\n